Thanksgiving Day has come and gone, and Matt Nagy remains the head coach of the Chicago Bears. That means the report earlier this week claiming Nagy was on the verge of being fired was inaccurate. The reporter responsible for it is now owning up to it — sort of.
Mark Konkol of Patch.com, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who previously worked for the Chicago Sun-Times, reported on Tuesday that Bears ownership had informed Nagy he would be fired regardless of what happened in Thursday’s game. Chicago won and Nagy kept his job, at least for now. On Friday, Konkol published a new article in which he tried to explain what went wrong.
Konkol acknowledged that he may have been “bamboozled” by a high-level source that he trusted. He said he doesn’t know if he was lied to or if something changed after he spoke with his source. Konkol said he offered the Bears a chance to address the information he obtained but that he “got snarky answers rather than straight ones.” He also noted that many members of the Chicago media don’t trust the Bears to tell the truth.
“If my source fed me bad information about Nagy, I should have done better, much in the way the Bears should have done better. … I don’t know,” Konkol wrote. “A trusted source in a position to know confidently told me Nagy would not be the head coach after Thursday’s game.
“Was that right at the time? Did something change? I don’t know.”
Konkol seemed to tread the line between admitting he was had and criticizing the Bears about how they operate. Either way, he was wrong and the whole thing was a bad look.
The Bears didn’t exactly come out and publicly support Nagy. Instead, they leaked information to the media insisting they did not tell Nagy anything about his job status. Nagy said the same.
Konkol’s report apparently led to some serious awkwardness with the Bears. We’ll never know how things would have gone if the Bears lost to the Detroit Lions. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really help Konkol.
Photo: Oct 20, 2019; Chicago, IL, USA; Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy looks on against the New Orleans Saints during the first half at Soldier Field. Mandatory Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports
